


Pet Peeve

by Shurely



Series: Salt and Pepper [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Violence, although this probably wasn't what people had in mind, cat fic, idk we'll see how this goes, redemption arc, someone had to do it, there is a cat called Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7313350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shurely/pseuds/Shurely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mission on Watchpoint: Gibraltar was supposed to destroy the last vestiges of Overwatch. Now, Overwatch is reforming: the heroes and oddities that were outcast joining together in anticipation of danger both familiar and unfamiliar.</p><p>Now, Reaper can have his answers. It's revenge. It's death. It's sure as hell not the white cat that follows him with worrying determination to wreck what remains of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Three weeks after the assassination of Tekhartha Mondatta, and people scuttled past The Meridian without a second glance, the pelting rain loud in their ears over the memory of the sniper rifle. Three weeks in, and it was old news, the shrine for the omnic sodden and unlit. There was to be a bronze statue of the omnic built in his honour.

Every week, on the three Sundays that had passed, a woman stood outside The Meridian, rain or sunshine, to gaze at the painting. Most, however, bustled through the street, not knowing that she had an old Overwatch-issue pistol under her coat from her mother, and that she would return to her apartment to listen to stories of glory and hope. Stories of _lies_.

Reaper took special pleasure in wrenching the pistol from her hands and shooting her in the gut with it, and then at the retired Overwatch agent who had leapt to her feet from her armchair. The daughter was first: still fighting, letting him drag his claws through her arms whilst she attempted to kick him down. But his body dissolved before impact, and her foot sank into gas. He allowed himself to relish the ghostly respite to his pain, freed from the flesh to surge into the woman and pin her to the floor. The ex-Overwatch agent had found her assault rifle, and he glanced her way just in time to see her eyes widen as he shot first. Her forearm splintered in red; the rifle dropped.

Then every molecule of his body sang with pain as they solidified, and he snarled furiously as he pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the woman's temple. His other hand gripped her wrists above her head. She threw her weight this way and that, but he knew from the colour of her shirt and her ragged gasps that it would be soon be over. He'd seen it a hundred times before. It was always better when they struggled.

When he leant down, she bucked upwards, slammed her head into his mask, opened her mouth to scream and-

He drew out her soul.

It fed through the holes in his mask, misting through his teeth and burning his tongue with the taste of blood and rot when he was sure that he had no tastebuds left. It ran slick down his throat, incorporeal and bitter, until he was satisfied by the shrivelled skin puckering at the muzzle of the pistol. Yet the chill that coursed through him was electrifying, invigorating, and he sucked it in as his body buzzed with the energy of it.

Even now, after all this time, he still had the urge to wipe his lips, as though the abrasive fabric of his gloves could tear the sensation from memory. Whatever remains of a stomach that he still had clenched in expectation, trying to digest the gas diffusing into his cells. It was the burst of pain in his side that made him whip round; the ex-Overwatch agent had hefted up the rifle with her other hand and unleashed a short volley of bullets. He growled, twisting around to face her, ignoring the agony of his shredded muscle protesting. She scowled at him in return, but her eyes flickered to the husk supinated beneath him. For a second, her expression changed to horror.

He reached into his coat and pulled out the shotgun. Its report covered her shout, and she crumpled to the ground. Yet the echo of her wracking coughs reassured him that she was still of use.

"Reaper," she stuttered, and he rose to his feet. He could feel his muscles contracting around the bullets, pushing them back through the tunnels that they had made, like maggots writhing their way back to the surface. He ground his teeth to the familiar pain, and stalked towards the old agent. His first shot with the pistol had found her thigh; even if she'd been able to bear walking on it, there was no hiding the now bloodied and mangled state of her torso. She glanced at the pistol, and he brought it up to inspect the scratches on the metal and faded colours. Heat seared through him, and he almost dropped it out of disgust.

"If you know me," he growled, catching her attention, "then you'll know what I'm here for."

His best guess was the bookcase: an alcove behind it, a room full of evidence. Or frozen in the fridge, hidden under ice. He watched her bite her lip and squeeze her eyes shut to fight the pain before he grew impatient and stepped forwards. She opened one eye.

"You...don't understand, do you?" She wheezed for a moment, but then continued with the same venom in her voice. "He tried so hard...to help...and yet, you decided to ally with _them_ instead. You could _never_ have been - been as good as him. Overwatch could _never_ have been yours."

The name brought a flare of hatred through his veins, and he swung the shotgun upwards to point it in her face, gritting his teeth to stop himself from pulling the trigger too early. "You're right," he hissed, seeing fear and confusion cross her face. "I was _too good_ for that obnoxious kindergarten dancing around the world on the UN's strings. If it weren't for me, your little games would have ended long beforehand. _Overwatch_ owes me." He paused to grace the woman with a second to cough wetly into the crook of her elbow, and then forced the shotgun against her skull. "Give me what I want, before I tear it from your lips."

"Either way, I'm dead," she retorted, before her voice cracked. "I just thought that my daughter - that she'd live on to tell the stories."

She tilted her head back onto the floor, and he shifted the shotgun to view her face. Her lungs had stilled. She should have been grateful that he hadn't pulled the air from them. But then he grimaced as his side twinged, a bullet worming its way to his outer skin. He sheathed the shotgun back into his coat and then dug his claws into the wound, spreading the skin with one hand and piercing into flesh with the other. Sparing himself the aggravation, he cut in and caught the bullet between his thumb and forefinger; plucking it out, he weighed the disintegrated shell in his palm. In a few minutes, it would be nothing more than a nub of metal, unrecognisable as a bullet.

But the police would soon arrive, and he didn't have what he wanted yet. A quick pat-down of the ex-Overwatch agent secured a key fob from around her neck and a phone. He slipped the latter into one of his coat's inner pockets to decode, and then proceeded to the bookcase, where he blasted through the wood and paper with a couple of shots from his shotgun. A grin stretched across his lips when he spied the glint of metal from behind the splinters. Too easy.

Then again, Overwatch agents never did had any ingenuity.

-

His boots squelched as he ducked under the garage door and then twisted to slam it to the ground. London's Underground had become its own city, a metropolis for the omnics almost with its own culture and laws. Filtering through crowds as a wraith always left him exhausted, limbs heavy and head pounding to join the chorus of constant pain. The omnics, bright-eyed as they were, did not have the same meddling curiosity as humans; of course, he kept to the shadows, where he belonged, but every glance his way was not met with a gasp or scream - unfortunate as that was. There was something useful about the tin cans after all.

He tossed the Overwatch-issue pistol in its holster onto the desk, where it skidded and nearly knocked over the tablet. The coat and boots were waterproof, and the Underground meant protection from the weather that plagued the London streets above, but there was no missing the trail of water leading from the garage door now to the desk, and he hated it. A ghost should leave no trail, least of all him: no indication that it existed, no evidence that couldn't be dissolved by his own body or witnesses that couldn't be destroyed.

He paused. Speaking of a trail...

The paw prints were unmistakable, fresh and glinting in the low light filtering from under the garage door; the real question was how they had gotten there. He growled in frustration, pursuing the culprit from their tracks. He should have known that pests would come here: a warm, disused garage near enough to the surface to be advantageous but deep enough to avoid superficial checks by the police. The past three weeks following the assassination had given him time to follow up on the rumours, to observe his prey and ensure a route for him to enter and leave when he struck. Now, with the phone still tucked into his coat, along with the key fob and some stolen equipment, he could continue his hunt.

As soon as he was finished with this one.

Given the size of the paw prints, he had expected either a small canine or a cat. But his irritation turned to mild disdain when he noticed that it was the latter, and that it had a mouse between its jaws. It stood in a puddle of rainwater, fur clinging to its thin frame, and Reaper decided that it had probably darted in before he'd closed the garage door in order to capture the mouse. It stared at him for a moment, before its jaw twitched and it ran from the stack of abandoned tyres to the bathroom. Well, there was a window in there; perhaps it would have the common sense to sneak through and escape whilst it still could.

He returned to the desk with snarl. He was wasting time. If he was right, then a recall message had been broadcasted across the globe: a recall for Overwatch agents. Unsurprising, considering that his attempt to extract their locations had been thwarted by that ridiculous ape, but he never should have placed so much faith into Talon's lackeys to distract Winston whilst he hacked into the mainframe.

What mattered now was to confirm the signal, and then infiltrate their headquarters where they would conveniently all be in one place.

A crash from the bathroom startled him. Really, how hard was it to get through the window? Was everything and everyone in this city utterly incapable?

Considering that there was little in the bathroom of use to him, he drew out the stolen items and spread them around the desk, matching them with the corresponding information already laid out. He immediately set up the phone, connecting a hard drive with decryption software to it. The key fob joined the other key cards that the previous agents had used to safeguard their connections to Overwatch. He took up the pistol, and briefly wondered whether he could walk in to the Overwatch rendezvous, so long as he disguised himself properly.

But no. He needed this to be overt. He needed them to fear.

He needed answers.

There was another bang from the bathroom, and he fancied that he dented the grip of the gun in his claws as he involuntarily squeezed. The _last_ thing that he needed was a godforsaken pest distracting him.

He exchanged the pistol for a shotgun and stormed to the bathroom, where the door was already ajar but he kicked it anyway. His first instinct was to inspect the small rectangular window, which was still unlocked and closed. The sink was empty, the metal tap mottled with rust and the ceramic yellowed. Had the toilet seat always been down? A muffled yowl from inside confirmed his suspicions. He huffed, using his spare hand to lift it, and out shot the cat, wearing with a fresh coat of water. It made a plaintive, miserable noise, and he glanced inside the toilet to see that a half-eaten mouse was floating on the surface of the water. He rolled his eyes.

"That's what you get," he growled, and flicked his gun at it. It eyed the weapon with more curiosity than caution. "Scram." He stomped forwards, causing it to flinch and stare up at him, as if admonishing. He jabbed the shotgun at it again, but quickly wrenched it back when the cat nudged it with its nose. When it sauntered up to his leg and rubbed its pale fur against his boots, he groaned in exasperation and reached down to grab it by its scruff, except that his clawed hand became subject to the feline's rubbing as well, its ear catching on his knuckles.

It was only when the cat was winding itself in and out of his legs that he caught himself motionless, and straightened up with a strange, delicate feeling in his chest that he was too afraid to name lest it break or dissipate. But he allowed the cat to lose interest in him and hop back onto the toilet seat, where it peered mournfully into the water.

"You haven't learnt your lesson, have you?" he remarked as he regained solidity in his lungs, and the cat meowed at him. He shook his head and stowed away his shotgun. "I'm not plucking that out for you. You should have known better."

By the time that the software had already done its work and he was skimming through the ex-agent's messages and emails, the only light coming from the electronic screens, the cat had emerged from the bathroom, but he'd forgotten where it had gone.

Of course, just as his thoughts strayed, something bumped into his left leg. He leant back on the stool to glare at the cat. The cat, as though aware that it now had his attention, then opened its mouth and dragged its teeth over his boots: his tailored leather boots, steel toe-capped and only a month old. He jumped, smothering a noise that was definitely a snarl and not a yelp, and kicked at the cat. It bolted to the other end of the room and climbed up the old stack of tyres. The light from the monitors bleached its fur white, but Reaper denied any fear that might have been in its eyes when he inspected his boot for any lasting marks. Stupid creature. Animal souls weren't quite as nourishing as humans', but he would do it just for the satisfaction of having the cat go limp in his hands.

Reaper glowered at the cat just in time to see it turn away, and he felt...cheated, as it stretched and lay down on the tyres. He clenched his fists. Later. He would do it later.

-

It was later in the night, the Underground rumbling with distant noises of the midnight workers, when Reaper heard a child calling as they walked down the street, making disgusting smooching noises as they did so.

"Jack?" they sang. "Jack? C'mere, Jack! Here, kitty!"

For a moment, Reaper sat still, his chest oddly tight. But then he forced out a snort, and glanced at the cat curled up atop the tyres.

"I think someone's looking for you," he said dryly.

The cat continuing dozing, unperturbed, so he turned back to the decrypted data from the phone. Yet the niggling sensation persisted as though the last of the bullets was still crawling through his skin, and he knew that it was a wound too deep for him to probe, to regenerate over and then forget the scar.

The child kept calling, and Reaper was seized with the urge to ghost through the garage door and strangle them, to stop the echo of that name. But instead, he blinked furiously to refocus his vision. Winston had indeed sent the recall signal, but this ex-agent hadn't replied - at least, there was no evidence of a reply. It wasn't as though she'd be the oldest on the team if she'd accepted; Reaper was more than certain that the old eccentric Reinhardt would leap at the opportunity to play hero again. There _had_ been the aspect of her now deceased daughter to take into consideration, but from what he'd seen, the woman would have happily joined her mother should have accepted the call.

Still, it had worked in his favour. The first rendezvous - one to gauge the numbers and test their mettle - was in Brussels, succeeded by another at Watchpoint: Gibraltar. Reaper chuckled aloud at that. Trust the ape to draw in his comrades to a place that Talon had already infiltrated. He didn't know why he had expected any more. But it all depended on whom Winston scraped up from the dregs of the Overwatch barrel to aid him. So many choices. So many faces...

He paused. The child had passed by. He glanced back at the cat. Jack. He could have laughed at the irony of it. It figured that Jack would come back to haunt him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Man, it'll be so good to write a fanfic without plot. I mean, I don't _have_ to write plot, do I?  
>  Brain: You gotta  
> Me: I don't know, I'm not good with plots, I think I should sit this one out  
> Brain: Nope, do it, you gotta  
> Me: Damn u right of course let's shove in some plot what am I doing
> 
> 1\. I imagine that Reaper's healing, when he's corporeal, works a bit like 'normal' regeneration: his body can push out foreign objects, and cuts and grazes are completely healed. The scars that he gets don't do much to help his already deteriorated skin. When he's incorporeal, most attacks go through him, although there are still ways of making him feel pain in his state.  
> 2\. Of course, turning into his ghost form is super draining, although in the heat of the moment he usually decides to go wild and exert himself as much as he can to be _intimidating_.  
>  Just as a warning, I know nothing of cats, so go ahead and hit me with some headcanons or funny stories or anything you like! My [tumblr's](http://samiltonbattmann.tumblr.com/) always open for questions and submissions!


	2. Chapter 2

A message from Talon indicated that there would be a dead drop at the end of that week. Reaper had been anticipating when the next mission would come: Talon were patient, methodical, preferring slow poison and concise aggression when they struck. Perhaps that was why he lingered with them; doubts fermented at the back of his mind, rotting away his resolution with thoughts of _what if_ and _maybe_. What if he'd been commander. What if he threw down his weapons now. Maybe there was more to the fall of Overwatch than he'd intended, than he'd overseen.

Doubt was toxic, and maybe that was what Talon had used in the first place to drive the wedge into place.

Of course, it was ridiculous, hence why it remained at the _back_ of his mind, where all of the useless clutter of his brain - threads of memories and something like humanity - struggled to concatenate into a purposive chain of thought.

The city was on alert again after the discovery of the two bodies, a palpable undercurrent of fear in the way people jerked at sharp sounds and spoke in a rush to be heard before they were unwittingly silenced. But Reaper had seen it all before; by the end of the week, it would be business as usual.

In the meantime, he had the whole of the week to research and plan before Talon issued their orders. The first rendezvous in Brussels was set for two weeks' time, and then the latter in four. It didn't give much leeway should Talon expect a stakeout, but they knew better - sometimes - than to station him in one place and shadow some corporate target.

There was also another problem on Reaper's radar: a vigilante currently in North America, sneaking into abandoned Overwatch bases yet pulling his punches to keep the security guards alive. Any old vigilante wouldn't have mattered - most were mercenaries like him anyway - but it was the reports of repeated trespassing that irked Reaper. The fact that the man was named after the 76 on his jacket did not speak much for his originality, but other than the mystery surrounding him, courtesy of his visor, there was a certain mediocrity about him: his tactics did not cause terror or inspire the masses - not like the names 'Reaper' or 'Jack Morrison' would.

Reaper grimaced to himself as he skulked through the alleyway on the way back to the garage. Unfortunately, there was now another Jack to plague his existence, and this one was no better when it came to drooling over him and whining in his ear. He'd told himself that leaving the garage would allow him to gain some insight into how the omnics were faring; for all of the supposedly egalitarian cities like Numbani, suspicion towards machines had never faded, and now the enmity between humans and omnics was stewing into a war. A second omnic crisis, people had whispered as he ghosted by, before they'd clammed up. Short and sweet - exactly what Talon wanted: a rumour, nothing solid enough for the world to act on, but enough to instil fear.

The other reason for leaving the garage, one that he was much more reluctant to admit to himself, was to escape the cat's capering around him. It wasn't at all that waking up smothered by heat and choking for air had cut too close to home, or that its incessant cries reminded him of souls too pathetic to defend themselves.

Well, let it be known that he'd tried to force the creature out: kicks, shouts, lungeing for its scruff and missing by a hair's breadth. If it had been one of his targets, he would have long since left the fillets of cat meat for the rats to feast on. But he still had the rest of the week to endure; even though the police were about as effective as a torn net when it came to finding criminals, their main focus was on the Underground, and he'd rather not test his limits by ghosting with all of his equipment on his back because he'd alerted the neighbourhood with gunshots.

He finally came to the garage door and glanced around. Light fell into the alleyway from the nearby street, broken by passing shadows that walked too quickly to spare him a look. The bottle by the side hadn't moved; the garage knob was still in the same three-quarters position that he'd left it in. He unlocked it and opened it up to his knees, holding his breath with the hope that something white and wiry would scamper out.

A moment passed, and Reaper concluded that his shins were still unscathed and nothing had come through. He wasted no more time in raising the door higher and ducking underneath it, slamming it shut after him.

Upon walking in, he immediately flinched at the sharp, sour smell. The garage had been more of a dump when he'd broken into it: discarded rubber tyres everywhere and metal parts that were more trouble stealing than they were worth. It could probably only have accommodated small vehicles used for traversing the Underground, nothing like the cars that raced in the air between the skyscrapers. Reaper had spent a good hour rearranging everything just so that he had a path from the garage door to the desk that he'd set up.

Dump though it was, he would have remembered the stench of urine emanating from his right. He scowled. Where the hell was that pest?

Claws latched onto his calf muscle. Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Reaper moved to shove it away with his foot, before he noticed something in its mouth. The metallic glint was too odd to belong to another rodent.

"A candy bar wrapper?" he muttered in disbelief, and Jack the cat meowed with an expression that was undeniably pleased. It dropped the wrapper at his foot, sniffed the nearby wall, and then clambered up its favourite stack of tyres. Reaper kicked the wrapper away. If that was its peace offering for all of the grief that it had put him through in the last twenty-four hours, then it was right to flee from him - even if that fleeing was more casual than he would have liked.

But the stroll through the Underground had piqued his curiosity, and there was always the chance that another employer had contacted him. He made his way to the desk and used his tablet to simultaneously display the news and his proxy inbox. The latter was empty, but the news was alight with police reports of suspects and documentaries of the ex-Overwatch agent. The circular symbol brought bile to the back of his throat, and he stabbed the desk with his claws as he waited for the news to change into other recent events.

-

With no need for digestion, the bathroom was almost bare, save for the bar of soap that was more like a greyed pebble. Reaper, however, regretted not investing in a little toilet paper to help wipe the drool off his coat - again. It stuck to his claws when he attempted to scrape it off, and he had half a mind to hunt down the cat and use its fur as a mop. A nest of rubbish had also amounted in the corner of the garage, including a bite of a hot dog that decomposed faster in his presence. What spurred this habit continued to elude him, but the stench of rot was familiar. Urine, not so much.

Reaper waited until Jack left via the bathroom window before locking it, sparing a moment to allow a snide laugh. For the rest of the day, he made plans of tailing this Soldier: 76, as impossible as that seemed. Yet there were only so many Watchpoints in North America, and cross-referencing different reports and accounts suggested that this vigilante was making his way south.

If Reaper could intercept 76 and destroy him and any evidence that he had on hand, then that would be one less threat to him: he didn't need someone digging up his past and making the connections. Better yet, destroy 76 and keep the evidence to find out how the UN had managed to manipulate Overwatch and Blackwatch for so long. He would reserve that plan as his contingency; after all, it wasn't every day that someone broke into the near-hermetically sealed bases and stole their equipment. It remained to be seen whether any data had been filched as well.

A wail broke through the memories of marching boots and familiar voices stirred by the thought of the Watchpoints. Reaper paused over typing on the tablet, and snatched up his clawed gloves. Then the cry came again, just as shrill and pleading, and he ground his teeth. He would give it five minutes - no, two. If the cat didn't get the message by then, he would scratch its eyes out and send it scurrying so it could never find its way back.

He carefully laid the gloves back onto the desk, just as another irritating cry rang out, and focused back onto the map on the tablet's screen. Soldier: 76's trail snaked in red across the states coinciding with the headquarters of big-name companies that had been bombed and Overwatch bases. The last raid had been in Watchpoint: Grand Mesa - a stolen heavy pulse rifle - that had Reaper huffing with scorn. All of the Overwatch rookies had wanted to get their hands on the latest assault rifles, eager to parade around with their shiny new toys and mimic their _favourite commander_. It had been especially satisfying to see them all jerk and fumble when it came to actually handling them, though. He remembered the first time that he'd picked up his two shotguns, remembered the confusion and the laughs and the crinkled blue eyes that said  _how are you going to reload them, Reyes, you idiot?_

The next cry was almost a scream, and he groaned, his muscles weakening with relief, cool air sifting through his lips as a sigh of black mist. He tore his gaze from the tablet to the bathroom door, staring accusingly at it as though the cat outside would understand that it was _not_ welcome and he was one second from giving away his position just so he could see a crater in the ground strewn with the cat's innards. He knew that he should just ignore it - it was a damned cat, after all - but it continued to trill with an urgency aimed for him and him alone, and the curl of emotion in his chest was too nostalgic to be just triumph or condescension.

Damned cat though it was, that was twice now that he'd felt it. Six years of degeneration and regeneration, rage orchestrating it all, and it took a single cat with a familiar name to play on his mind and make him pause.

He was up on his feet and heading towards the bathroom before he realised that he'd left his gloves on the desk. The undulation of sensitivity in his fingertips was disconcerting at the best of times, so he kicked the door open - again - and looked to the small window that gleamed yellow from the Underground's light. The lack of a silhouette made him frown, but he'd heard the caterwauling clearly enough; he unlocked the window and pushed it open, providing enough space for a cat to shimmy through.

And when the white creature finally appeared, he would deny with every fibre of his being the smirk that pulled at his lips, especially when Jack made his rounds of the bathtub's rim before approaching him. He reached out with a finger, no more, for Jack to sniff. For a second, there was a soft breath on his knuckles, before those cells died and the cat turned heel simultaneously, tail flicking upwards. Reaper stared, and frustration prickled under his skin.

"Don't play hard-to-get with me, Jack," he muttered. Jack the cat peered over his shoulder at him, probably just alerted by his voice, but Reaper saw the challenge in his eyes, bright as the Indiana summer, and he scoffed. "We both know it won't last."

Because one of them was going to give in, and this time, it wouldn't be him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the kudos and lovely comments! Your pets are all absolutely crazy and adorable, and hearing their stories motivates me to continue writing! From what's written about London in the Overwatch universe, I kind of envision the Underground in London as becoming its own city, more than just the tube stations: shops that have expanded to accommodate the influx of omnics, even one-storey flats and businesses. Hence the garage. I hope that clears some things up! I know I'm very vague when it comes to these things.
> 
> Keep hitting me with stories and funny facts about your pets! I love it!


	3. Chapter 3

Usually, it took a while to knit himself back together at the seams, to seal his ghost into its cage and then rediscover his senses. Starting with pain. Always testing his threshold, seeing how much he could take right off the bat. Today, though, there was warmth in his core, and he could feel himself exerting weight and pressure - he could _feel_ , and it was a dizzying, terrifying few seconds of wondering whether he'd been cured or moved on from the world.

But the first thing that he did was seek out the warmth in his chest, and his heartbeat seemed to stop when his bare fingers threaded through fur - fur that he knew was white and a little patchy in places. Then his chest vibrated, and the sound of low contentment reached his ears. For once, he could share in it. Muscles still tensed, because he knew how life liked to screw with him when it came to these things and lure him into a false sense of security, he tilted his head back further into the mattress, and thought about the last time that he'd awoken feeling whole.

Too long, was his immediate response, curling a finger around a soft, delicate ear. It flicked back into position when he played with its tip. But his amusement ran out when pain wound through his muscles and made his gut twist, and he nearly pinched Jack's ear when it crescendoed. With a sigh that plumed in murky black, he prodded Jack's side.

"Get off," he grumbled. At least his face was free; he managed to avoid Jack's paw as it batted his hand. "We can't all live off rodents," he added, when Jack continued to stretch.

But he was spared having to aggravate him any more, as Jack slipped off to the side and disappeared from Reaper's field of view. Reaper flexed his limbs, accepting the agony that it wrought, holding on to the residual warmth in his core. In the early days of this undeath, he'd compared his physical state to the effects of the Soldier Enhancement Programme; it had been easy to lie to himself, compare one punishment to another and assure himself that if he could live through the burning hell of the SEP, he could damn well put up with this smoky crap.

Yet the SEP was temporary, and he ran out of platitudes to give himself. It was hard to hold onto his disintegrated body in the morning, let alone such a fragile thing as hope. Anger was easier: a more tangible lifeblood, running hot and cold through his system, working a heart that was heavy as lead by the evening.

The ache settled into his limbs, and he brought his shotguns closer as he sat up. Jack had found his usual spot on top of the tyres, a lump of grimy white fur that was the source of the hairs on Reaper's tactical vest. Reaper huffed to himself: there had to be some way of preventing cat hair from sticking to him like Velcro. He didn't see anyone else walking around practically wearing an animal rug on their shoulders.

Also, it wouldn't do him any favours if he sauntered up to Talon's representative with his coat ruined. He'd had his fair share of taunts and jeers from civilians and agents alike, but they all fell flat with a shotgun pressed to the underside of their jaws, or simply rose into screams when his claws found their eyes. The few that hadn't shirked away had been the children on Día de los Muertos...and Jack the cat. Still, that was a list that Reaper could deal with. If it had been any longer, he wouldn't be spending his idle hours picking out hairs and researching cat repellent.

He donned his coat and clipped his belts together, all the while reading the news from the tablet propped up on the nearby stool. An omnic worker was being accused of the murders - no real basis, Reaper noted, just a name to satisfy the public and warn omnics to keep their heads down. He left the bed to load up the ex-Overwatch agent's phone; true enough, a message had been relayed to the agents to be on their guard. Well, at least they'd strung together the shotgun damage with the withered husks to correctly place the blame - unsurprisingly the only thing that they were capable of doing, since he hadn't received any surprise visits from them about it.

No further news on Soldier: 76. In Japan, the infamous Shimada Castle had been broken into: guards killed and furniture vandalised, but no trace of the criminal. Reports indicated that they hadn't used a firearm, since no gunshots had been heard - only distant roaring and shouts. Police investigation results were vague and inconclusive; leaked pictures of scorched floorboards and arrowheads had wound up in the media before they'd shortly been removed. Reaper scoffed. As if the world didn't know about the Shimada clan, they would now.

But curiosity gnawed at his otherwise indifference: the younger kid, Genji Shimada, used loiter with the ridiculous gunslinger Jesse McCree, even though there'd been little reason for Overwatch and Blackwatch to fraternise. The recall message appeared to have agitated at least one of them into returning to Hanamura, prompting a conflict. As much as Reaper preferred to collect his payment and go, working with Talon meant overhearing conversations and peeking behind the curtains of politics. It was understandable that Talon had fingers in every corrupt organisation's pies, and the Shimada clan was no exception, even when it had been targeted by Overwatch under Genji Shimada's guidance and forced to retreat - until the Petras Act signalled the all-clear to resume their activities.

So it would seem that the Shimadas had been galvanised by the recall. He would leave them to Talon; a high-profile, mobile target like Genji would attract too much attention for him to tackle by himself. He left the bed and headed to the desk, counting the pieces to ensure that nothing had been stolen overnight or shoved onto the floor, as Jack was wont to do.

He paused when he noticed that two of the key cards had disappeared. He suppressed the flare of panic and ducked under the desk, gritting his teeth as he scooped them up. When he glanced at Jack to deliver a reprimanding glare, he saw that he'd moved again. Half of the time, Jack was a lazy lump; the other half, he was without a moment's rest, dedicating himself to pestering Reaper and climbing around the garage. It wasn't as though he didn't have the option to leave; Reaper could only conclude that the cat derived entertainment from his suffering.

Three more days. That was all he had to bear.

-

The shadows of the Underground were familiar to him, as they were to all of the residents avoiding the skyscrapers and the violence soaked into the cobbled streets. Yet even with experience, or the illusory technology that Talon installed for their top agents, they would be hard-pressed to connect to the shadows as intimately as Reaper could. It would have made the days of Blackwatch easier: not that it would have been worth the pain - any of it, current or past - but simply for the convenience.

So he could admit his respect for the agent that ambushed him in the darkness of an alleyway, unloading a round of bullets in rapid succession to Reaper's stomach. The shock made it easier for him to dissolve and ghost to the side; over the thudding of the assailant's feet, he heard the bullets clink as they fell to the ground, and snarled at his impromptu opponent. But the second where he was going to reach for his shotguns was stolen as they swung their body round and forced him to block their kick. They stayed close, keeping him on the defensive and his hands busy. He tore through the cloth of their jacket, exposing metal through the claw marks, and followed up with a jab to their head. The solidity of steel confirmed his suspicions. They caught his arm and twisted it down, pulling him off-balance. He went with the momentum and tackled them back.

His mind reeled at they staggered. Either omnic or cyborg. Not that a shotgun slug to the cranium couldn't make the two equal in death.

"Gabriel Reyes?"

In the tumult of fury-panic-suspicion that gripped him, he almost missed the calm, tinny quality of their voice. But he duly noted it as he whipped out his shotguns.

The assailant nodded. "Thought so."

Reaper fired into a sudden hard light barrier that jumped up into a concave shield around his opponent. The surface shimmered with the impact of the bullets; when it cleared and Reaper moved to leap through, he glimpsed the spark of electricity before nodes set into his chest. The bullets that had first hit him felt like plastic pellets in comparison to the current that blazed through his muscles. His senses warped, trying to settle when his ears were filled with the crackling, as though the bones in his head were breaking over and over, and the darkness was enkindled with jagged white.

Disappear. Disintegrate. Ghost. _Move. Fight._

He would later begrudge the shot to dumb luck, that his finger would contract around the shotgun's trigger to blast the agent's kneecap and send them buckling. But in the moment, he knew only of the abrupt end to the current, and seized control of his limbs to knock his assailant flat onto their back and shatter the hand that was still holding the gun. The nodes followed them to the ground, clattering loudly. Their scream brought a sharp smile to his lips; he kept it even when they kicked upwards and rolled with a knife in their other hand. He dropped onto their waist and used his weight to pin them down whilst he cracked their head to the side with his elbow. Then he shoved a shotgun against their forehead and hissed, " _Die_."

He didn't have time to wipe away the blood that exploded from the dented metal; he merely stowed his shotguns away and frisked the corpse for any material of note. The gun slotted into a holster at their belt; he re-buckled it to himself and tamped the smaller gadgets down into his pockets. Just as he was leaving, he scooped up the hard light shield, which deactivated as soon as he moved it.

The walk back to the garage gave him time to seethe and grimace. Flickering between his solid and fog states eased the ache from the electricity and replaced it with the usual, bone-deep pain. But it could not help the muddle of thoughts that clouded his mind. His name, from the lips of a cyborg. There'd been no insignia on the agent's uniform, nothing to denote a mercenary faction or street gang. A part of him, vain and nostalgic, hoped that no Blackwatch agent would have been so stupid as to hunt him down. Either way, more fool them: they'd thrown themselves into the lines of fire, and that was one less person chasing after him.

Yet worry wound itself taut in his gut. They had made the connection. Gabriel Reyes didn't exist any more, but this cyborg had pieced them together. The combination of a shield and electricity reminded him of Watchpoint: Gibraltar, and he actually considered for a moment that an Overwatch agent had come after him: that would be giving them to much credit. But he toyed with the thought as he navigated the long-way back to the garage, sensitive to every noise and motion around him.

It was time to leave. His position had been compromised. As soon as he received the dead drop, he knew exactly where he was going. Fortunately, he still had some pesos tucked away somewhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting there! Thank you again for the kudos and comments!


	4. Chapter 4

He'd said that not everyone could live off rodents. But the more Reaper found himself watching Jack and sighing as he chased them around the garage, the more convinced he became that Jack couldn't either.

_It's the end of the week_ , he told himself: he'd survived the critter's antics, and in turn, Jack had survived Reaper's sporadic fits of rage. That had to be worth something - for both of them. It wasn't common that one could boast to have seen Reaper and lived, let alone bunked with him and soiled his bed and clawed his skin. The cuts faded but the sentiment didn't. Jack always had been handsy.

The rage had been well earnt, or so Reaper mused as he browsed the shelves. Scratches over his tablet's screen, the litter scattered around the floor, the fact that Overwatch was preparing for their clandestine meeting in Brussels - he had half a mind to destroy Jack and half to destroy Overwatch. Together, his thoughts were unanimous that he should destroy _something_.

Also, the challenge could not go unanswered. Reaper picked up a tin can and ran his fingers over the edge, thinking how easy it would be for it to dent and burst. The cyborg agent that had ambushed him in the alleyway a few nights ago had not been Overwatch: their technology was a different brand of gimmicky to the ape's toys. The name 'Talon' bobbed on the surface of his paranoia. They were too clever to stamp their insignia on a mercenary to challenge another whom they regularly employed. But to kill them when they had a dead drop scheduled? It was illogical. But perhaps not for them. They had their own plans. Still, if luring him into a trap by promise of a target was their method of disposing of him, then he would be very disappointed. They boasted a reputation for a reason.

Yet the list of those who knew his identity was limited. He didn't need someone trying to plaster the history of a dead man onto him, alerting Overwatch to his tactics. He assumed anyway that some of them had their suspicions - if Winston hadn't guessed from when Watchpoint: Gibraltar had been invaded, then Overwatch truly was doomed - but those at the heart of the group were too weak-hearted to send an assassin after him. It could have been an act of vengeance: his life for taking those of the other ex-Overwatch agents. Again, he hoped that none of his Blackwatch team were so reckless as to take him on - he’d taught them better, after all.

There was a polite cough to his right. He peered past the edge of his hood to spy a woman waiting by his side, fluttering hands belying her courteous expression. The basket hanging from her arm was filled with store-brand food; she gestured to the shelves, and he felt a flash of anger. Could she not see that he was deep in contemplation, that he was making more important decisions than she would ever face in her lifetime?

"Can I just..." she began, stepping forwards, and he instinctively growled, almost crushing the can in his hand. She near leapt backwards, and he watched in triumph as she hurried away to another aisle.

As soon as she was out of sight, he ran a hand through the fine hairs on his scalp, pulling out a few in the process and gathering flakes of disintegrating skin beneath his nails. Then he readjusted his hood and opted for a less dented can of tuna, weighing it in his hand for a moment before rolling his eyes to himself and picking up yet another.

They'd survived this long. It had to be worth something.

-

He was greeted with a headbutt into his leg, followed by content purring, as though Jack knew the contents of the bag. Reaper wouldn't be surprised if he had some sort of cat intuition. But when Jack moved away, the sight of the white fur clinging to each protrusion of bone banished his doubts, skin dipping between his ribs and jutting over his shoulders. He set the bag onto the desk and donned a clawed glove, using the tip of his index to pierce the lid of one of the cans as he took it out from the bag. Jack hopped up onto the desk, but Reaper shooed him down.

"If you want any of this," he hissed, "you'll behave."

Jack sat down, regarding him eagerly as he left to drain the tuna into the toilet sink, tearing off the lid so that the stupid cat wouldn't scar his face any more than he already had. Jack pounced on the can as soon as it was in reach at the base of the tyre stack, and Reaper allowed himself a flick of his finger through Jack's scruff.

Then Jack made a retching sound, and he jerked with a jolt of panic - no, just surprise. Regardless, was he supposed to do that? Reaper straightened up and reached for his tablet whilst Jack resumed eating the tuna without another hitch. He spent a moment simply staring at the nicked screen, muscles frozen with disbelief at his own actions. If Jack choked, wouldn't that be ironic? That this little...celebration, treat, respite, had been a stupid idea from the start?

But he looked it up anyway, because unless Jack had some sort of feeding issue or was allergic to tuna, then Reaper was still in control of who lived and died. Jack continued to lap up the tuna, and Reaper loosened his grip on the tablet.

The results were amusing nonetheless. "Tuna junkie," he read with a scoff. "Right." But then he glanced down at Jack, who was still happily chewing. Better to stop an addiction before it started, no? "Come on," he said all of a sudden, nudging Jack away with his foot. Jack wailed and scratched at the boot, trying to get back to the tuna. Reaper gave him a firmer shove. Jack complained loudly. "Damnit, Jack," he swore, "I'm doing you a favour. Like you would know help even if it danced in your lap."

But the bright blue eyes that peeked up with him were round with innocence, and he wasn't sure what part of looking into them melted his resolve into a warm pit in his stomach and forced him to move away. He carried the tablet to his desk, gazing sightlessly at the name 'Soldier: 76' as the data feed beneath the portrait blurred into strips of white. It was just a cat. _It was weakness._ He was harmless. _He was ruining his equipment._ He was affectionate, unafraid, tactile. _But he would leave - it wouldn't last._ Nothing ever did. This was temporary. Soon, he wouldn't have to worry.

He planted the palm of his hand onto his forehead, groaning. "Just don't disturb me now," he ordered to Jack, taking a seat to prise out the shotgun from his civilian coat. The nudge into his calf made him pause. Jack's eyes were closed - relieving him for a moment - and he was kneading his head into Reaper's muscle. Reaper bristled. "What did I just say? Aren't you satisfied?"

When it was clear that Jack wasn't going to leave until he was spoiled, Reaper huffed. It would be so easy - too easy - to reach down and gorge those eyes so they could never look at him again. Why did they have to be so blue anyway? Why did Jack's fur have to be as soft as satin between his fingers, parting like corn stalks in a field that he had visited a lifetime ago, warm on his chest in the morning? He would have taken a bullet to the skull if only it could bury the pain of nostalgia with physical pain, because _weakness_ , that was it, and it didn't belong in a vengeful ghast.

But for now, the gloves could shield skin from fur, and he couldn't see Jack's eyes. So he could indulge him. It was about the both of them, after all.

He missed the voice, though. The whining was close, but...nothing like the laughter to follow it, the flutter of kisses and the murmur of apologies that warmed his lips. Nothing like his name: moaned, slurred, guffawed, snarled.

"All right, that's enough." He pushed him away, with enough force to remind the creature that he was just prey, just a toy, and Reaper would be the one to leave this time. Jack scampered off, and Reaper deliberately turned his glare back to the tablet so that he wouldn't see where he went.

-

Dead drops tended to be a quick, subtle passage of information: a USB tucked between sheaves of paper, a written code that decrypted into a name, a repositioned road sign to indicate a particular location housing a target. Talon chose places with poor to no surveillance - not that it mattered, since security companies nestled in their pockets and strung their feeds into Talon's web of influence.

Reaper knew, from rejecting multiple contracts offered by Talon, that there was always a backup; each mercenary in the world had their own gifts and curses, and Talon obviously recognised him as one of the most useful, yet no mission was exclusive. _Someone_ had to undertake the tasks that he did not - Talon would never leave them open-ended - and Reaper retained a dormant curiosity to meet whoever did decide to accept.

More often that not, however, there was a shadow in the background, far enough from sight to be indistinguishable but never without visuals on her targets. Their most reliable agent, a thorn in Overwatch's side towards the end of its life and just one of the poisons seeping from Talon's influence. She took the alias of Widowmaker, but Reaper had caught the glimpses of Amélie Lacroix in her demeanour before. But these flashes of character were all controlled, giving her enough incentive to work but not nearly enough to question Talon's indoctrination methods. 

She was proof: that Overwatch had always been lazy, that someone had been pulling the strings from behind the curtain, that it was possible to completely override a person's thoughts and implant them with a different dogma. Reaper had worked with her on occasion, and was pleasantly surprised to find that a): she was almost completely incapable of diverting from mission objectives and therefore independent action; and b): she cared little about his identity. It had also been easy to separate Widowmaker from his old friend Lacroix; the unerring accuracy of her shots triggered a few memories of her work within Overwatch, but the cruelty of her laughter never failed to bring him back to the present.  
And so in that moment, Reaper braced his shoulders, smoke crawling with skin in an angry torrent as his dead drop became a live drop.

" _Bonsoir, mon cher_ ," she said smoothly, her lips stretched with cold mirth. Her sniper rifle was stowed over her back, the grip within reach over her shoulder. " _Tu resembles la mort_."

He couldn't resist a smirk. Whether it was flattery or derision, it mattered little: she was the one whose skin looked like the backside of a frozen corpse. " _Bueno. Como debería ser - no espero menos_." He gestured to her, and then the rooftop shadowed by the adjacent buildings. "What's the occasion, for Talon to arrange a meeting instead of a dead drop?"

"Think of it as us keeping you on your toes," she replied wryly, holding out a microchip in her palm. "The fact that I'm standing here must have alerted you to the importance of this mission." Her tone turned icy, and he humphed. "We cannot afford mistakes. This mission requires your complete co-operation with us. Will you comply?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonsoir, mon cher. Tu resembles la mort. - Good evening, my dear. You look like death.  
> Bueno. Como debería ser - no espero menos. - Good. As it should be - I expect no less.
> 
> Tuna junkies are a real thing, I swear.
> 
> I've also updated the tags, because I think it's unfair for me to tag these characters when the story has changed and so may or may not include those characters (or just briefly mentions them). Also, thank you for your patience! Let me know if the translations need tweaking!


	5. Chapter 5

The slamming of the duffel bag onto the desk caused Jack to jump and stare in alarm at Reaper. But Reaper kept his hands busy with tucking the equipment in, scooping up all of the key cards and fobs into a packet. The cyborg's shield projector lay next to the Overwatch-issue pistol; he weighed them both in his hands for a moment before shoving them in as well. It wasn't as though his supply of shotguns would ever run out, but it never hurt to have backup.

Besides, he would need a quieter weapon once he scouted the residential areas of Dorado, Mexico. There was no absolute guarantee that Soldier: 76 would head there, but Reaper had studied his movements at almost every waking hour during the week, and there was always the Los Muertos gang for him to investigate should 76 divert his course.

London had its pockets of organised hatred against omnics, but nothing to rival Los Muertos. Reaper's leads and contracts had brought him through Mexico on occasion, and the sprayed accusations and curses against omnics were garish during the day but bright with menace at night. Their tactics were nothing to admire, but Reaper had been more than willing to assist the violent disassembly of several of the tin cans. Grinding metal beneath his boot, crushing their heads - it was brutal, unsophisticated, but hell if it hadn't been cathartic. Almost as good as the First Omnic Crisis.

He looked back at Jack, who pawed through the rubbish pile in the corner of the garage, and smiled wryly to himself. It had been an interesting week, he would admit. He wouldn't miss the yowling and the marking, and it wasn't as though those blue eyes weren't impressed into his memory already. But...he appreciated the change of pace, even if it had been simply a moment to scratch Jack's head and find the best deals for tuna.

"Jack," he called, softly so that it would matter less if Jack ignored him. But when blue eyes met his, the breath in his body left as a weary sigh. "C'mere. I'm leaving tonight and I'm not letting this tuna go to waste."

He opened the last can of tuna and set it out on the ground. As Jack scrambled towards it, he collapsed the desk and stool up his bag and then leant on the desk, a headache growing in his temples. His attempt at leaving no trace was a little skewed, considering that few would accuse a cat of dumping rubbish into a corner (to be honest, he would never have considered it either, but cats were odd creatures and he would never understand their habits). It irritated him more than scrubbing the hairs from his coat, but it would be worse if he spent time trying to clear it up. He was on a tight schedule now; the sooner he left London, the better.

What would happen once Reaper was gone?

It could have been any name. It could have been anything to describe this thin, scarred, white cat that proudly left his shit and hairs over Reaper's equipment. Anything to describe his warmth over Reaper's chest, the fur soft on his neck and through pocked fingers. But he couldn't help how it reminded him. Jack the cat. Jack the nuisance. Golden Jack.

He was better left behind, in this debris and half-darkness, and Reaper knew that. In the end, it was just a cat.

He shouldered the duffel bag, gave the bathroom a once-over, and then opened the door to the garage. Hood secured, he braced himself against the night air. There was nothing refreshing about the short breeze that swept through the alleyway; he scowled at the dust blown over his boots, but it was only a matter of time before they were caked with dirt and blood anyway. At least the wind brushed a few hairs from the toe caps.

Something bumped into his leg. Reaper rolled his eyes.

"The garage is all yours now," he said. "Enjoy your garbage nest and swimming in the toilet."

But instead of being subjected to Jack's gaze, as he expected that he would, he saw Jack stare off to their left, where the streetlights lit up the entrance to the alleyway in harsh yellow. Reaper gave a moment for Jack to scarper as usual whenever the garage door opened, but Jack did not move; he stood resolutely by Reaper's leg, barely touching, ears pricked and pink nose twitching.

So Reaper moved instead, and with a bit of a scuffle and several choice Spanish insults, he left the garage behind.

-

Vac-trains from England to the United States weren't the most accessible, but the fact that Reaper could be in America within two hours meant that the London police - if they even caught wind of his presence - would be chasing after his shadow, and any other assassins would have to confront him in this oversized sardine tin.

Widowmaker's smile had been characteristically cryptic when Reaper had mentioned the cyborg agent's attack. But the furrow of her brow and her sharp gaze had warned him to stay alert; she was still Talon's, perhaps always would be, but her lip curled and she shrugged away his accusations whilst her eyes told him to be on his guard. A glimpse of Amélie. He wouldn't complain. If Talon could be hollowed out from the inside, burn to the ground, just as Overwatch had, then Reaper would gladly stand back and watch it happen - hell, he'd take a front row seat.

But he wasn't ready yet, and the cyborg's ambush was proof of that. The last death - the ex-Overwatch agent - must have been one step too far, too close to Talon. Cyborgs were resilient, but it would take a special tip-off to direct one to his doorstep. Until now, he hadn't been sloppy: his methods were _distinct_ , to be sure, but he'd been covering his tracks. Only Talon had known where he was; the supposed dead drop had been arranged in London to be convenient for him. The cyborg had known his name to boot. They had known how to incapacitate him, just as the ape Winston had in Watchpoint: Gibraltar.

Widowmaker had claimed that their little meeting had been to keep him on his toes. But the look that she'd given him afterwards told him that _that_ had not been his only test.

He groaned to himself, restless within the compact space of the vac-train's baggage hold. His limbs ended in smoke, curling around the stacks of suitcases and bags; his own duffel sat on top. He saw through the darkness its fabric move. Just a few metres away was a cabin full of civilians; the thought of them, unaware and with their backs to him, had him gritting his teeth to hold back a hungry snarl. The distance to Mexico was greater than he could achieve through ghosting, even though the only way to guarantee anonymity was through breaking his body down and phasing. Still, even if he did devour the entire cabin to obtain the energy, he had... _delicate_ luggage.

It would be a long, painful journey of train-hopping and boredom. But at least he wasn't alone in his suffocation.

-

Stealing Doomfist's gauntlet. That was their mission. A good soldier wouldn't ask why. Reaper was neither.

The abandoned house sported a mosaic of graffiti over the bricks, a safe enough distance from Dorado to serve as a temporary base for him. Spiderwebs draped from the corners and the ceiling; he clawed them out of his way, noting the spiders that dropped onto his coat. Names, curses, promises had been sprayed inside as well. There was no water left in the toilet. Hot dust rolled in from the doorless front porch, making the Underground breeze seem little more than a spatter compared to the tide coming in from the plateaus. His black boots were already matte grey.

He used them to kick away the litter and clear a space for his desk and stool. If he wanted any idea as to Talon's direction in its activities, then researching the power and the history of each Doomfist was essential. Of course, now that he was in Dorado, he was almost looking forward to meeting this Soldier: 76, unearthing his motives, ending his life. He needed to scout out the city to see if Soldier: 76 really had chosen it as his next destination.

First, however, he had more pressing matters. A dishevelled blur of white sprang out from the duffel bag as soon as he unzipped it, stretching and then meowing at him. Reaper chuckled.

"You're welcome," he said dryly, setting up the very hairy desk and stool. "It was this or going back to eating mice and rats. And your expensive ass is hooked on tuna so don't tell me that you would have stayed."

There was a good chance that Jack would just leave, run through the doorway and lose himself in the plateaus or the city. That would probably be for the better. But until then, Reaper had a companion, and he wasn't going to let go of this one that easily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for your patience, kudos, and comments! You guys are amazing and they really keep me going!


	6. Chapter 6

"You're scratching the leather," he snarled, just as Jack pressed his behind into the back of Reaper's head and gave it a thorough rub for good measure. His patience worn through, Reaper's hands shot out and caught the cat under his armpits. With a little prying as Jack protested and dug his claws into Reaper's coat, earning a hiss of irritation and another Spanish curse, Reaper finally held him out in front, his huffs warming his mask. He could have sworn that Jack's lips were upturned.

"Don't look so smug," he snapped, giving him a small shake. Jack's expression did not change. He was imagining things. "Always were a troublemaker, weren't you?"

He feared looking at his coat and witnessing the damage, but he gritted his teeth and did it anyway. The horror that washed over him at the carpet of white hairs and the notches in the leather reminded him that cats were considered the devil's spawn.

"Can you afford another one of these?" he said abruptly. Jack wriggled in his grip. "No. I didn't think so. _Hijo de puta._ "

He set Jack down, more gently than the creature deserved, and then glanced back at the tablet. Local news played on the screen. The unchecked violence by Los Muertos assured him that little had changed in Dorado even with the construction of the gaudy nuclear plant by LumériCo: a stark metal thumbtack amidst warm terracotta and the colours of the Festival de la Luz.

For a celebration of light and life, there were plenty of shadows for Reaper to sweep through, noting the areas that Los Muertos actively held their influence, compared to the spots that were spared their patrols. Phasing through the streets had demanded re-energising in return, and he'd had to pull aside one or two thugs to drain. The last gang that he'd ever dealt with...couldn't possibly have been the Deadlocks, could it? Those dirty bastards that washed in the dust and drank their own piss and hooked teenagers into firing pistols before they had even grown their first whiskers-

He closed down the tablet with a snort to himself. The one good thing that had come out of Blackwatch was that it had taught a certain wannabe-cowboy the sense to recognise danger and actually think for himself - not that it was completely foolproof, if the news about the gunslinger hopping on trains and fanning the hammer on his revolver was to be believed. But he'd pulled out when it'd mattered, and for that, Reaper had one less thread of guilt in the mantle that weighed on his shoulders every day.

He wanted to think that Jesse McCree would be smart enough not to fall back into Overwatch - because he hadn't had any other family when he'd joined Blackwatch, and damnit if the Commander hadn't seen a veiled insecurity that had resonated a little too deeply with himself - but that would be like willing for the sun to set the other way. The siren call of the recall signal likely would be enough to sway the gunslinger into attending the meeting in Brussels.

Speaking of which, it was now less than a week away; Talon's mission to steal the Doomfist gauntlet inadvertently - or purposefully, he had no way of knowing - coincided with the meeting. He had to prioritise. Common sense dictated that the mission for Talon would might provide an insight into their plans for the future: what destruction they intended or corruption they would endorse. Sentiment howled at him to get on the next vac-train for Europe and rig the whole of Brussels with explosives so that if an Overwatch agent so much as sniffed for C4, their nose would end up in a different city entirely. Just to be on the safe side.

Everything had been "on the safe side" since the Swiss base explosion: tracking down ex-Overwatch agents, moving from country to country to see the Second Omnic Crisis play out firsthand, acting as the double agent with Talon even when they had a cold-blooded sniper that had bested Ana Amari as one of their bloodhounds. But leaving London so abruptly? Being ambushed by a cyborg? That wasn't _safe_ ; that was _messy_. Somewhere along the line, he'd realised that it was all coming to a head, and he'd let himself get sloppy.

He looked at Jack, before rolling his eyes with exasperation. _That's right: blame the goddamn cat_ , he thought, _because you're too lazy to accept that its your own fault_.

His own tiredness.

Maybe it was the constant pain that he liked groaning to himself about; maybe it was the transience of living, with no home, no base, no real physical body for him to rely on. Nobody to rely on. Maybe because it had finally sunk in that this was it: killing until he was killed or immobilised, because once he uprooted the parasites that had fed on Overwatch, he would be left with an ultimatum that he could not accept.

If all went to plan, Talon would be ruined; for his actions, Overwatch would hunt him down. Neither would forgive. Fate liked to stick him in limbo, it seemed.

"Take care of the place while I'm gone," he said to Jack, affixing his mask and pulling up his hood. Jack leapt up onto the stool that may or may not have held some residual warmth for him to nestle into. "That means keeping your paws to yourself, _tú entiendes_?"

One last patrol of Dorado - something to stave the boredom off for another night, circumvent the ridiculous existential questions. Who knew? The nostalgia of spices in the air and the heat might just be what he needed. 

- 

He watched the violence unfold.

Starting with the omnic.

Lights crisscrossed the market square, connected to the monument in the centre, swaying gently in the salty coastal breeze that Reaper inhaled through his mask. He'd left the docks behind after confirming that several of the boats housed drugs and weapons for trafficking under Los Muertos, but the sound of seagulls and the lapping of waves followed him in as faint echoes. More than once, he'd had to stop to pry the confetti from his boots, hence why he'd opted to crouch on one of the roofs overlooking the square.

The omnic was hanging up the piñatas onto the walls, its feet clanking as it moved from doorway to doorway. Reaper sneered to himself, before turning his attention to the darker alleys. The other people in the square finished closing up their stalls; fragments of conversation detailing daily life and the Festival de la Luz floated up to the roofs. When a woman groaned about her children wrecking the house, Reaper found himself grinning: he'd had his fair share of tomfoolery as a kid, stealing the matches and tipping hot wax onto the floor, slapping paint on the family's antique dining table, adding salt instead of sugar to the cookies - until it had been vehemently schooled into him that his new table would be a dumpster if he didn't behave.

But the woman's tone was the fond kind of exasperation: the relief that her children were at least safe at home and playing with piñatas than with a knife. Funnily enough, the three thugs that sauntered out into the market square had only a baseball bat between them, yet it was enough for the people to clam up and finish their business. They whooped and jeered, slapping a girl's ass when she tried to duck around them.

Reaper could have drawn their path to the omnic before they even set eyes on it. From the looks on the other people's faces, they had predicted it as well; the square was evacuated aside from the three Los Muertos thugs and the omnic holding onto the piñata with both hands. He could have sworn that he saw fear in its glowing sockets, but it might just have been the shadows that fell onto its face as the thugs crowded around and backed it into the wall.

"Hey, you havin' fun with those piñatas, _amigo_?" called one man, his head closely shaved apart from the rat's tail near his nape. The tip of the bat, crowned with metal, found its way to the omnic's shoulder, embedding between the plates to dig into the wires. It shook its head, holding its hands up. The man whacked them away with the bat. "You like piñatas, huh?"

Reaper sat back to watch as they pounced on the omnic, needing no other reason than a little catharsis as metal clanged against metal and electricity sparked from the omnic's wires as they were torn apart. Out of the corner of his eye, Reaper saw a set of shutters close; the clamour was enough to keep the neighbourhood up, but in the ten minutes of denting the omnic, not a single person came out to protest. It was reasonable: these people had never truly accepted omnics, and for one to disappear and turn into scrap? Well, it was nothing to lose sleep over. The beating would be over soon.

Until the girl appeared - hesitant, as one would expect, but hailed by name by the rat-tailed man, who shoved the bat into her grip. They weren't exactly the entertainment that Reaper had been seeking when he'd set out, yet he snorted as the girl stammered and stared. The man laughed with his friends, stepping back to exchange a smirk with them, before his expression turned to anger and he shoved the girl forwards.

"Do it!" he shouted, before his voice turned to a whine. "It's just a bucket of bolts!"

Reaper had to commend the girl for her astonishing indecisiveness; she should have known that they would prey on it, tossing around her pouch like kids on a playground. Then the heavy bass music that had been rumbling in the background rolled in as a truck, and the three men jumped onto it. As the girl gave chase, red light flashed across the square from an alleyway. He instinctively tensed, leaning forwards. Excitement ran hot through him, sparks and jitters that he hadn't felt for a long time.

It was about time Soldier: 76 showed up.

The omnic continued to fizzle as it struggled to right itself, but it froze when the smoke of Reaper's phantom cascaded from the roof and slithered across to the alleyway. The currents of coastal air, cool and humid, tried to divide his atoms, but sheer will kept them in formation. He could hear the soldier's boots pounding the pavement as they weaved through the alleyways and into darkness. If 76 was looking for more technology to steal, he was going in the opposite direction; there was nothing in this area but houses used as storage facilities for Los Muertos. Reaper smirked to himself: was that it? Was it just that Los Muertos was transporting something that the vigilante wanted? Perhaps this man was more of a disappointment than he'd thought.

Then 76 slowed, and Reaper had to rein himself back, light as air but charged with anticipation. The painful reforming of his body into solid mass wiped the grin from his face, but to see 76 sneak up on two Los Muertos thugs within the alleyway, knocking one out with a punch to the head and the other crashing into the dust, was entertaining. The sound of screams was music to his ears, the scraping of the thug's nails being the finishing touch. Smiling piñatas watched as 76 dragged the thug back into the alleyway.

Reaper gauged the confines of the alleyway, and breathed in before ghosting up to the roofs once more. The ache was quickly forgotten as he counted one man on his side, taking a smoke with a rifle on his lap, whilst three on the other side walked their rounds, unperturbed by the soldier and the girl that had both apparently found their way to the next loading of Los Muertos contraband. It was a wonder how they had managed to avoid the authorities for so long. He wouldn't be surprised if some officers doubled up their wages by switching uniforms at night.

Two of the thugs - Rat Tail and his mate - set down their boxes to investigate the groans, heading towards the girl. He couldn't imagine that they would provide a lift back to her house, but they were startled easily enough when 76 threw a thug into the mains, cutting off electricity to the section. Reaper silently approved. This was a man who appreciated theatrics.

Good reflexes. He'd give him that. No bionic enhancements in sight. Chemical, most likely - the biotic canisters strapped to his arm and hip were a good indication of that. Beyond that, it wouldn't be too outrageous to suggest genetic enhancement: the man _was_ taking them on literally single-handedly, since he was still holding that ridiculous pulse rifle.

It was too familiar. The smoothness of his attacks, manoeuvring the rifle to keep it close until he needed both hands to toss a man aside. Reaper had seen rookies be thrown in the same way when their stance hadn't been lowered enough, when they had misstepped and allowed their Commander to send them onto their asses. Reaper's stomach churned uncomfortably. He'd used up too much energy, that was all.

If the piercing whistle of one of the thugs didn't wake the whole neighbourhood up, then the shriek of the minigun as it ploughed bullets into the alleyway was the next best thing. Reaper hissed to himself as the thugs up on the roofs ran over and sprayed the alleyway with their rifles; they juddered with the recoil, unfamiliar to the firearms, and if it weren't for the fact that 76 was hilariously outnumbered and outgunned, then Reaper would have left them be, let them shred through the vigilante so that he could pick off what he needed from the cadaver later.

In that split second, when 76 dove out from the alleyway like a reckless, stupid _pendejo_ , Reaper jerked. Just a reflex. He'd seen some pretty stupid things in his time, but this was one to rival some of Jack Morrison's finest moments. The explosion of the helix rockets lit up the shock of white hair on 76's head, the ravines on his forehead weathered by worry, and the colours of his jacket. In that split second, Reaper felt heat wash over him just as his insides went cold.

But 76 continued moving, and the thugs kept shooting, and goddamnit Reaper would blame _everything_ on the cat when he lunged, distracting the guy on his roof long enough for 76 to land a shot through his ribs. The man choked out on blood, and Reaper hauled him close to snag his soul. It was bitter and it was sweet and it diffused into every cell until he trembled with energy, laughter, pain-

Jack Morrison. He'd known, always known. An old man, to be sure, but still a _man_ , still alive with flesh and corporeality, performing acrobats with a gun like he was still in the spotlight. Reaper had to pull his hands from the corpse, prising bloody claws away. He shouldn't be in pain. Could souls be dodgy? He gripped the edge of the roof instead, taking deep breaths, sucking in air for a body that could break down into gas.

He'd known. He'd suspected. It just...stood to reason that Morrison would get the better end of the deal and come out as an old man from Switzerland, whilst Gabriel Reyes hadn't come out at all - died and then been reanimated as a ghost with only vengeance to fill the void of his organs.

The voice. No. It was rougher, as if someone had sandpapered his throat - not even the paternal my-word-is-final tone that he'd taken on in his years of Commander, a far cry from the adorable, cheery twang that had insisted that they could get through anything together, just them, Jack and Gabe, whether it be the SEP or this new Overwatch unit or the duties of two different commanders.

"These - aren't - your - streets," he snarled, punctuating each word with a fistful of burning piñata, "any more."

The girl screamed, and Reaper wasn't sure whether the noise he made was a laugh or a sob. Why did she think that there were any heroes left in this world? Had she honestly believed that he was there to save her, that he was any better than the thug that beat up the omnic just moments ago?

...Even if he did throw himself over her and let the explosion send them both sliding through debris. But that was just typical, wasn't it: goody-two-shoes Jack, protecting the children, screwing with the mission when it suited his own needs. Reaper tore his gaze from the man to watch the truck that had left with the injured Los Muertos thugs. They would spread the word. It would be difficult for 76 - Jack - to sneak up on them again.

"You're one of those heroes, aren't you?" the girl called.

Smoke plumed in the alleyway from the explosion, but Reaper saw 76's eyebrows twitch, just enough to convey surprise, before they settled close to his visor.

"Not any more," he replied gruffly.

And Reaper believed him. He wasn't Jack Morrison: young and bright with optimism, affectionate with every touch and kiss - not even the hardened Commander that had lowered Ana Amari's coffin into the ground. He was barely even a soldier now. Gunning down criminals, roasting them with the power of his helix rockets, only to submit to instinct to save the girl. It dawned on him in a flush of cold realisation that this man, too, was out for answers - breaking into Watchpoints, bombing corporations - and he was ready to destroy himself to get them.

His chest tightened as he stared after the man he'd loved, and he dissolved into the shadows, mind set as the reflection of fire in the frightened child's eyes replayed itself over and over.

-

The key cards clattered as he spread them out on the desk, cursing as blood on his claws painted the metal of different tags, until he lifted up the key fob. Then he pulled out the phone, checked that the recall message was still there, and paired them together back into the inside of his coat.

When he turned around, Jack the cat was padding towards the door, pausing only to catch Reaper's eye.

"You gonna leave me again?" he whispered, denying the way that his rasp grated his throat and all of his muscles seized with preemptive rage.

He would be back. He might be changed, but he would be back. It was either that, or follow him out. 

-

He grimaced as he opened the door, his vision immediately clustered with notations and diagrams: the formula of the spent biotic canister that he slammed onto the table, the composition of fabrics in his jacket that he slung over the back of the chair, the models of the data sticks extracted from Watchpoints and agents. He slumped into the chair. Flashes still burned behind his eyelids. His back tingled from where embers had peppered him through his jacket. He ran a hand over his side, where his flesh had knitted together but continued to ache, and sighed. At least he didn't have to run repairs on the visor tonight. Small blessings.

He gave the room a cautionary scan; it didn't hurt to make sure that no Los Muertos goon had followed him. A new notification sprung up: a phone model, sitting on the mattress on the floor. The pulse rifle was primed in less than a second as his heartbeat hammered through his veins; he scanned through the diagrams, searching for an indication that it was a weapon. When he stood up, nice and slowly so as to not trigger any possible motion sensors, his mind spun with chastisements and explanations.

The last time that he'd used a phone had been pre-Overwatch, before he'd owned the prototype visors. He edged towards it, tired body kicked into alertness by adrenaline. Ideally, he should run. But he'd already put up with one explosion tonight, so if God was going to be this cruel and make him face another, he was going to do it head-on.

It was almost weightless in his hand, although that was no indication that it didn't contain any explosives. Left on the mattress was a metal circular object, with a ring in the middle that looked like it could light up with LEDs - some kind of key, he would have said. Activating the phone caused it to load the most recent messages that had been received.

The top was labelled 'Urgent'. He scowled. This wasn't Los Muertos' doing; if they were going to leave a present, it would have been in a crate, all tidy to take him out. Vishkar, then? They must be pissed from the digging that he'd been doing into their shady operations, destroying their competition - literally, since they had a special recon team at their disposal.

He opened the message. It was a video. His muscles locked when a large hand moved the camera to pan it up to a familiar face: nostrils wide, head framed with shaggy fur, a set of rectangular glasses that would earn the primate's rage if so much as touched. It was a face that evoked dread, pride, and curiosity in equal measure.

"To all agents of Overwatch..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _hijo de puta_ \- son of a bitch  
>  _tú entiendes?_ \- you understand?  
>  _pendejo_ \- dumbass
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with this! We finally got here! The first scene was inspired by this [awesome fanart](http://monsterboysandrobots.com/post/145743097113/the-problem-with-having-old-white-cats) \- everyone in the fandom is so talented *cries* Honestly, I've really appreciated all of the kudos, comments, and bookmarks! I'm going to be away for a while now, but a sequel might be possible! Have a good day, and thanks again!
> 
> Sshh I didn't realise that the power plant wasn't in the 'Hero' short - I thought that it was just hidden behind the buildings, okay, for the sake of this fic, just pretend~


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